Community Workspace/Tegra3/Nexus7/PA installation

Plasma Active for Nexus 7

Disclaimer

Please be warned that, by following the instructions stated here, you will lose the warranty on your Nexus 7. Furthermore, you might damage or destroy your Nexus 7 or even worse. You do all the things described here on your own responsibility.

Event though very much already works reasonably well, there are still some glitches. So, please don’t expect a 100% working system.

Installation

Download

You can get the current version of Plasma Active for Nexus 7 including the MOSLO here.

You will need the “plasma-active-*.tar.bz2″ as well as the “moslo-nexus7-*.tar.gz” files. The “*.ks” file is the file that was used to create the rootfs tarball (“*.tar.bz2″).

Extract ”moslo-nexus7-*.tar.gz”

Unlock

In order to install Plasma Active on the Nexus 7 you need to first unlock the bootloader. Warning: Unlocking the bootloader erases all data and resets the device to factory defaults. Note that you need the fastboot tool to perform the unlocking and further installation. You can get it from Android Platform Tools for example.

1. Reboot the Nexus7 into the Android boot loader. To do this, first power down the device in the normal fashion (hold down the power button, then select power off and wait a few seconds). From the off state, hold the volume down button and press the power button. Continue holding the volume down and power buttons until you see the boot loader interface.

2. Plug in the device to your computer with a micro-USB cable.

3. Verify that fastboot lists the device:

$ sudo fastboot devices

You should see the device code shown.

4. Initiate the booltoader unlocking:

$ sudo fastboot oem unlock

You will be prompted on screen to unlock the bootloader. Follow the on-screen directions to continue.

5. Complete the process by rebooting:

$ sudo fastboot reboot-bootloader

Or simply press the power button. When the device reboots back into the bootloader (fastboot mode), you should see "LOCK STATE - UNLOCKED" in small red print. At this point Nexus 7 is unlocked.

MOSLO

After you unlocked the bootloader (and rebooted keeping the volume down key pressed), you should see the Nexus 7 bootloader showing “Start”.

Makre sure you connected the Nexus 7 to your PC with the USB cable and that no other USB devices are plugged-in. Perform the flashing of MOSLO:

  $ fastboot -c "ro console=tty1 rootwait rootfstype=ext4" flash:raw boot zImage-moslo initrd-moslo

You could also specify options like “fbcon=rotate:1″ for rotating the kernel output into landscape or “quiet” for suppressing kernel output. For the first tests it is strongly suggested to keep the kernel command line as-is.

Install PA

When flashing of the MOSLO succeeded keep the Nexus 7 connected to your computer and press the power button in order to boot into MOSLO. With the Nexus 7 connected to your computer via USB, MOSLO should automatically export the userdata partition as USB storage device. You can check, e.g., via “dmesg” that a new USB device showed up.

In this short guide we will use the entire userdata partition and don’t set up multiboot. At first we format the userdata partition as ext4 file system:

  mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdX
  # /dev/sdX is where the exported userdata partition showed up.

Next, we mount the userdata partition and extract the rootfs tarball to it:

  mount /dev/sdX /mnt/foo
  cd /mnt/foo
  tar xvf /plasma-active-nexus7-*.tar.bz2
  sync
  cd -
  umount /mnt/foo

Boot PA

In order to boot into Plasma Active simply detach the Nexus 7 from your computer by pulling the USB cable. MOSLO should detect this and initiate the kexec hardboot procedure. You should see a notice that the device will reboot in 5 seconds. Do not press any key during reboot.

The device then reboots and the same bootloader “Start” screen should appear as at the beginning. This time simply press the power key. Your Nexus 7 should now boot into Plasma Active. Please note that I could successfully test this procedure with the 8GB model. However, it failed with the 3G 32GB model.

If there are problems booting into Plasma Active this way you can try to restart the device holding down the volume down key. When the bootloader screen appears you can then try to directly boot into Plasma Active with the MOSLO kernel as follows:

  fastboot -c "root=/dev/mmcblk0pX ro console=tty1 rootwait rootfstype=ext4" boot zImage-moslo
  # For the non-3G models X is 9.
  # For the 3G model X is 10.

Note that when you reboot Plasma Active your device will reboot twice. At first the MOSLO will be booted which then performs a kexec hardboot and reboots into the actual Plasma Active.

If you don’t need the MOSLO and want to boot directly into Plasma Active on reboot you can do this permanently by flashing the MOSLO kernel as follows:

  fastboot -c "root=/dev/mmcblk0pX ro console=tty1 rootwait rootfstype=ext4" flash:raw boot zImage-moslo
  # For the non-3G models X is 9.
  # For the 3G model X is 10.

You can re-install the MOSLO at any time later without any problem. You can also temporarily boot into MOSLO by following the MOSLO installation instructions above and leaving out “flash:raw”.